Remembering the 'Bulge'

The Legacy of WWII -- Norman Sokay

Friday was a World War II anniversary that not many people remember, the end of the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler’s last, desperate roll of the dice. It was one of the biggest, bloodiest battles in U.S. history.

In 40 days of fighting across 75 miles of the snowy Ardennes, 19,000 Americans lost their lives — about three times as many as the number killed in the decade-plus wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

“I’m just lucky to be alive,” said Norman Sokay.

He’s almost 90, a resident of Rancho Bernardo. He says his memory isn’t what it used to be, but he remembers how confusing it was to wake up one cold morning and find that the war they thought was almost over had flared back up with a hellish fury, German tanks crashing through the trees, giant searchlights blinding the Americans, rifle shots snapping everywhere.

“There was no warning,” he said. “We didn’t know what was going on.”

He remembers the day he ran 50 yards across an open field to a house full of German soldiers and ordered them to surrender — and they did, 15 of them. He earned the Bronze Star for that.

He remembers how a medic saw him limping, checked his feet, and sent him to a hospital, where surgeons made plans to amputate toes turning black from frostbite, a common injury during the battle. Somehow he talked them out of it, got blood flowing again, and walked out under his own power.

Walked out and eventually came home to the United States, to a life of marriage and children and work as a hotel owner — a life that had its ups and downs, of course, but also one that others who were at the Battle of the Bulge never got.

Ask him now about the battle and that’s what he remembers most deeply, the ones who never came home.

About this series

"The Legacy of WWII: How the war shaped a generation and San Diego" is a monthly series, published over the course of a year, by U-T San Diego writers Peter Rowe and John Wilkens. The series examines how World War II shaped the "Greatest Generation" and our home and is supported by the U-T's video partner, Media Arts Center San Diego.

‘Nuts!’

After storming ashore at Normandy on D-Day, the Allied Forces pushed steadily forward, through France, into Belgium and Luxembourg and even into parts of Germany. The front lines generally stretched from the North Sea in Holland along the German border past Switzerland and into Italy.

“We thought the war would be over by Christmas,” Sokay said.

In the Ardennes, four American divisions of mostly inexperienced or battle-weary soldiers were stationed. Called the “Ghost Front,” it had been a place of beautiful scenery and limited action, which is why Hitler chose it for a counteroffensive.

At about 5:30 a.m. on Dec. 16, 1944, some 200,000 German troops with 1,000 tanks pushed through the American lines. Their goal was Antwerp, a Belgian port town about 85 miles away. They wanted to separate the Americans from their British allies, seize needed fuel and other supplies, and then negotiate a peace favorable to the Third Reich.

Hitler was counting on two things — the element of surprise and poor weather that would ground Allied air power — and in the early days he got both. The Germans seized key crossroads and moved toward the Meuse River, creating the protrusion in the front lines that eventually gave the battle its “bulge” name.

“He concentrated every last resource he had,” said Maurice Isserman, a history professor at upstate New York’s Hamilton College and editor of the World War II papers of Walter Cronkite, who covered the battle for United Press. “The British were in a different sector, so it was really a toe-to-toe American vs. German battle.”

Confused, isolated, fearful that all they’d fought for would be lost, American soldiers stitched together pockets of resistance. They set gasoline on fire rather than let the Germans have it. The invented passwords of Americanisms to foil English-speaking spies who were sowing panic. They rallied around news that 80 U.S. POWs had been massacred in Malmedy.

At Bastogne, a key road hub, the Americans were surrounded. The Germans ordered them to surrender. Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe sent back this famous reply: “Nuts!” The fighting there raged for days.

Photos of Norman Sokay of Rancho Bernardo, during his service in the Army during World War II. On the left, when he joined in 1942, as a Corporal, center, and as a Staff Sergeant at the end of the war. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge.— Howard Lipin

+Read Caption

Photos of Norman Sokay of Rancho Bernardo, during his service in the Army during World War II. On the left, when he joined in 1942, as a Corporal, center, and as a Staff Sergeant at the end of the war. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge.
— Howard Lipin

Sokay, who fought outside Bastogne, said the Germans aimed their shells at the trees overhead, showering the Americans with shrapnel and falling limbs. Fighting in deep snow drifts, some Americans froze to death during what was one of the coldest winters on record.

His squad leader, “a hell of a soldier,” was killed during the battle, Sokay said. That left him in charge. He was 21.

Steep price

The skies cleared, and American planes brought firepower and supplies. On Christmas Day, an epic tank battle halted the German advance about 50 miles from where it had started, just short of the Meuse.

By the middle of January, the Allies were pinching off what was left of the bulge and pushing the Germans back into Germany. Combat spread from village to village, building to building.

In Tettingen, Germany, Sokay’s unit came under fire from enemy soldiers in a house. While other Americans shot at the windows to give him cover, Sokay ran to the house. He knew enough German to order a surrender.

To his surprise, and relief, 15 soldiers walked out with their hands up.

One of them, he said, was in his 50s or 60s, a veteran of World War I. He had an Iron Cross, a German award for bravery, with the date 1914 on the back. He gave it to Sokay, who still has it.

Then Sokay heard an American calling for help from the burning basement. He pulled the man, captured earlier by the Germans, to safety, according to his Bronze Star citation.

With Hitler’s final gamble a failure, the war ended four months later. Looking back on what had happened in the Ardennes, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called it “undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war.” He said it would be “regarded as an ever-famous American victory.”

It came at a steep price. Total American casualties — dead, wounded, missing and captured — were 105,102. Combat deaths alone numbered 19,246, and more American infantrymen were taken prisoner here than in any other European campaign: 20,102.

Isserman, the historian, doubts that 21st century Americans could endure such a bloody campaign. U.S. presidents, especially since Vietnam, “have recognized they couldn’t fight that kind of war again,” he said.

That kind of war — it’s never far from Sokay’s mind. He has a picture frame hanging on a wall with his Bronze Star in it. He has in the living room a shelf full of books about the war, including one called “Patton’s Pawns,” which mentions him twice. (His take on the fabled “guts and glory” general: “It was his glory and our guts.”)

And he has photos of himself from the war, one taken around the time he enlisted, at 19, and another when his service was over.

Only three years separate the two pictures, but the difference in his face is striking. He’s clearly been aged by what he saw and what he did.